Seminole, Martin Absentee-vote Trials End

Election 2000

Judge In Seminole Case Expresses Doubts

December 8, 2000|By New York Times

TALLAHASSEE -- Two trials seeking to discard nearly 25,000 absentee votes from counties where Republicans were allowed to fix Republican ballot applications ended here Thursday, putting the question of what to do about enough votes to decide the results of the presidential election into the hands of two judges.

One of them, Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Ann Clark, who heard the case seeking to throw out more than 15,000 votes in Seminole County, expressed her doubts as to whether any votes should be thrown out. But she made it clear that she was concerned that the Seminole County supervisor of elections, Sandra Goard, had allowed a Republican Party worker to add missing voter-identification numbers to Republican absentee-ballot applications that had been rejected because they were incomplete.

Noting Florida law that holds that votes can be discarded in situations where there was "substantial noncompliance" with elections law, Clark asked: "The substantial non-compliance: Is it on the part of the voters, or the part of Ms. Goard? If Ms. Goard did not substantially comply, isn't it she that should be punished, and not the voters?"

She said she would issue a written ruling as soon as possible, but she did not say when.

A second case, seeking to throw out absentee ballots from Martin County, where Republicans took rejected ballot applications out of the elections office, added the identifications numbers to them, and resubmitted them, wrapped up just before the Seminole case.

The judge hearing that case, Terry P. Lewis, who said he would issue a ruling today, gave fewer indications of his thinking. He said he would confer with Clark before issuing his ruling, but he did not say whether it would be about the substance of the cases or simply the timing of gathering the parties together.

Meanwhile, a case challenging absentee ballots in Bay County for other reasons was thrown out of court Thursday.

The Seminole and Martin cases stem from an unusual get-out-the-vote effort and a printer's error.

Both parties in Florida, to increase turnout among the party faithful, send out mostly completed requests for absentee ballots for voters to sign and send in. This year, though, a printer's error left a piece of required information, the voter-identification number, off the Republican form. So Republicans scrambled to try to fix thousands of applications that were signed and returned incomplete.

In Seminole County, party leaders sent Michael A. Leach, the North Florida regional director, to the elections office with a laptop computer containing all the voter-identification numbers. He took the rejected applications from Goard, added the numbers, and resubmitted them. More than 2,000 absentee ballots were mailed out.

In Martin County, Tom Hauck, a local Republican official, removed the rejected ballots from the elections office and had the proper voter-identification numbers added to them.

The problem with all this is a Florida law that was passed in 1998 to crack down on absentee-ballot fraud. The law states that only voters and their relatives or guardians can request absentee ballots, and it goes on to list the personal information, including the voter-identification number, that "the person making the request must disclose."

In both cases, local Democrats filed lawsuits contesting the elections, arguing that Republicans were given favorable treatment that had an effect on the outcomes.

"This was done in a partisan way," complained Edward S. Stafman, the lawyer for Ronald Taylor, the plaintiff in the Martin County suit. "Democrats did not receive the opportunity to correct their ballots."

But Peggy S. Robbins, the Martin County supervisor of elections, said she had not given special treatment to the Republicans.

"The mistake that was made on them was made by the Republican Party," said Robbins, a Republican. "It only seemed logical to allow the Republican Party to correct that mistake. The preprinted number was not received from the voter."